Category: Course

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1: VERB FLOWERS

You'll need... straws, sticky labels, coloured paper, verb sheets.

Firstly... Write a verb they recognise on the board, such as "videt"; see if they can recall all the conjugation endings for the verb. Include the infinitive and imperative endings. (It might be fun to explain how in the old days, teachers would get their pupils to chant the endings, and to get them to chant through them!). (Then move onto verbs in other conjugations they have met.) Explain that the unchanging bit of the word is the STEM.

Secondly... Tell them to make "verb flowers", using straws and bits of coloured paper cut into petal shapes. The stem is the straw, and using the verb sheet, they need to select a verb, write its stem onto a sticky label and wrap it around the straw. Then they need six or eight petals on every flower (depending on whether they use the infinitive and imperative endings as well), with the correct ending for the verb group written on each petal.
Telling tales... Tell them a myth involving a flower, such as the story of Hyacinthus. End by observing that lots of plant and flower names come from Latin, and the "proper" names which flower-growers use are all Latin names.

2: A DAY IN THE GARDEN

You'll need... word sheets, pictures of flowers.

Firstly... write the word "bellis perennis" on the board, and ask the children to guess which flower it might refer to. Tell them "daisy" and explain the meaning of the Latin words and how they apply to a daisy! Remind the children that the "proper" names of flowers and plants and trees are in Latin, and this is because those names tell people useful things about the seeds they are buying, such as the colour, whether the plant is fragranced, whether it flowers all year round or not, etc. Hand round some pictures of flowers, with their Latin names written below. Ask the children to write down, firstly, what the English name for the flower is, and secondly, what the adjective (which comes second) might mean...

Secondly... write up the correct versions, and also the adjectives. Draw attention to the ways in which the adjectives change to agree with the plant.

Telling tales... discuss the story of Hyacinth that was told last week. Mention / briefly tell of some other stories of people turning into flowers. Get the children to explore why there are so many stories like this, and ask them each to come up with a story behind a flower.

3: METAMORPHOSIS!

You'll need... Latin sentences for each story (to be cut into strips and put in the wrong order!); vocabulary sheets for each group; clues for each group.

Firstly... put up a few practice sentences, such as "puella videt puerum". puella videt manum pueri", testing simple subject-verb-object-indirect object sentence translations. Split the class into five groups and explain the the class that each group is going to need to use these skills to unravel a mystery story. Hand out to each group the sentences cut out, vocabulary and also some sort of clue (I put these into plastic containers for each group, and put into the boxes sheets of paper to write out the sentences and small pencils too).

Secondly... the groups each work out the story translating the sentences and putting them in the right order.
Telling tales... the groups tell the stories to the class, using the Latin and the English. Encourage class discussion of the stories: why did the character change into another thing, was it fair? Why did the Romans like stories like that? Do you like that story?

4: MORE TRANSFORMATION

You'll need... sentences cut into strips from previous lesson, paper, five large "backing sheets" to stick the comic strip sentences and pictures onto.

Firstly... Write down the Latin word for each of the animals which the character was turned into from the stories. Recap the stories briefly. Ask the children to copy the Latin down into their books, and also to write a summary of the story which their group had to translate last lesson.

Secondly... Hand out each group one of the stories, but make sure the groups have different stories than they had last time. Ask the groups to work out the English for the sentences, and then each person in the group to draw a picture depicting what is happening in one of the sentences (one sentence per child!), and then they can stick the sentences beneath the pictures onto a large coloured sheet to make a wall display of cartoons!

Thirdly... each group to find a sentence with a subject in, then an object, then a gentive. Write these sentences up on the board, underlining the subjects, objects etc. and ask the children to copy these sentences down into their books.

5: IF I WERE A RICH MAN...

You'll need... gold, silver and bronze coloured paper, cardboard.

Firstly... Ask the children to call out the numbers from 1 to 10. Get them to guess what 11 might be. Finally tell them, and show them the numbers up to 20. Discuss how numbers are useful, and what the most obvious daily activity is for use of numbers and working out calculations. Hopefully, they will bring up money at some point. Using pictures (from the internet or elsewhere), show the children three common types of Roman coin: the aureus, the denarius and the sestertius. Explain that they were made of gold, silver and bronze respectively, and that the coins had genuine value (as opposed to the "symbolic" value of our coins today – this will interest them, since I they are unlikely to have thought about money in these terms before).

Secondly... ask each child to make some of each coin, using coloured paper stuck onto card cut into circular shapes.

Thirdly... ask which coin they think is worth the most of the three types, and then finally reveal to them the relative values of the coins (obviously this varied, but I used 1 aureus = 25 denarii = 100 sestertii – it's also a good excuse to remind them of singular and plural endings!). Ask the children to write down in their Latin books the new numbers they have learned, and also the coins and how much they are worth.

Fourthly... Collect in the coins and then hand out a random amount to groups of two or three. Write up on the board a grid of how much it would have cost in Roman times to buy various basic foods and other things (check out the internet for these). Get the children to draw up a shopping list based on the coins they have. Once they have done that, get them groups in turn to read out what they would like and hand over the money!